Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes
By: Elizabeth Lesser / Narrated By: Xe Sands
Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
First time? Liked it. Second time? Oh gosh! juuuuuust what I NEEDED!!!
So p’raps I should reiterate what I’ve said a few times in previous reviews: I’m a boob and a half. When I listen to an audiobook, just as when I used to read print books (Aaaaaages ago!), I’m not really absorbing them. No, rather I’m wallowing in the experience of them. This makes it absolutely wonderful to listen to audiobooks over and over again and again, till death do I traipse upon, each time finding something new within the run time.
This explains how only recently our little audiobook club had Cassandra Speaks as our focus… and how I summarily, uhm, forgot it. I KNOW! Even after a lively discussion!
And so I had to listen to it again to craft this review. And oh thank GOSH I did because, you see, I’d juuuust finished Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri, and boy did I have images burned into my brain, or what? Is there a way to take an ice pick and caaaaarefully hack the beJESus outta certain parts of the brain? I was willing to try…
But then I started Cassandra Speaks and was instantly soothed. Yup, it rankles in the beginning as we contemplate how one of the oldest stories ever told has been tugged out and touted for, like, EVER: Adam and Eve. Eve munching on an apple, offering it to Adam (She was probably just being kind as we know that men are more prone to microwaveable meals), and then the two of them being discovered by God, chucked outta Eden, and since it was aaaaaalllll Eve’s fault, she and womankind are forever doomed to the agony of childbirth and subservience to men. Instantly author Elizabeth Lesser turns this tale on its ear and suggests that p’raps Eve is but a child in the beginning and later, through the apple, has her eyes opened to her surroundings, her place in the world, to knowledge itself. She takes this, moves forward, and now women have a chance for wisdom.
So there’s that, a feminist’s take on the Eden story, but in no way does Lesser expound on anything any where neeeeear chucking out the patriarchy for a matriarchy. Rather, she writes that wouldn’t it be nifty if women could simply be granted equal footing? And, after my sexist comments on men and microwave dinners, I should add that I’m feeling a tad sheepish here cuz she is NOT condemning men anywhere, is instead offering a rallying cry for the two genders to support and absorb their alternatives. Why is Tomboy good and Sissy bad? Why are men shamed for showing vulnerability and women are called, well, “unkind” terms for embracing power? (By the way, when Lesser uses the term power, she offers it not as having power over others in an unequal relationship, but being able to be “gallant” as Toni Morrison calls it, being able to comport one’s self with dignity, speaking truth when necessity demands it).
Part one is a discussion of history and the tales we tell ourselves or are told in our culture. it offers alternate ways, reframing of ideas, of telling each story. Maybe Pandora didn’t release all the evils into the world; maybe she instead saved Hope in the box for all of humanity. And maybe we can learn to speak as Cassandra did (She who was granted visions of the future but was damned in that nobody would ever believe her), speak truth, use our voices as women, despite the odds of being well-received by men. Part two is about power and using it. Part three is stuff to pack into our personal toolkits so that we have strength but maintain our openness, no matter the vulnerability.
The whole does indeed smack of self-development rather than a reshaping of history, a revamping of male-dominated stories. But heck, this is a book to empower people to be, dare I use the oft-demeaned word? “authentic” to themselves, to balance activism (acting for outward change) with innervism (A term Lesser coins for looking within to make change). Yup, meditation is offered as one of THE ways to go, which my therapist is always trying to get me to do (I have a tendency to Catastrophize so it would greeeeatly benefit me to place each doom-inspired thought on a leaf and let it go down a river…). Alas, that’s a work in progress for me as I have ooooodles of hamsters CONstantly running on wheels in m’ brain.
So, lots of good here, and while my sister found Xe Sands to sound a bit smug (saying speeding up the narration helped), I must say that I’m continuing my like-love relationship with this narrator. She has such warmth in her voice, a sort of earnestness that comes out as she relays Lesser’s heartfelt text. There’s a touch of humor that runs through it all, and Sands doesn’t blow it all (ALWAYS a relief). I usually get worried whenst I’m starting a new audiobook with a favorite narrator, desperately hoping they’ll have earned my grand opinion of them yet again (Nobody likes to hear failure…!), and I sweated mightily to have my mom and my sister check her out (EsPECially as we have, like, a gazillion and six of her works here in reviews, and I’ve cheered her performance each time…). That “smug” at times was the worst that could be said was a treMENdous relief, so Huzzah for Ms. Sands! And I think she knocked it outta the park yet again. So if you’ve been keeping up with my sister and generally find her opinions to be spot-on? Well, there ya go: Great book, narration coming off a trifle smug every now and again.
After Hunting Season, where a male author thought it’d be hiLARious to make women nothing but bedfellows, where they’ve nothing to do but (So sorry to be graphic, but:) bend over? It was sooooo nice to listen to this audiobook where stuff like that’s addressed and writing like that is knocked off its pedestal.
Listen to this if you’d like to learn how to accept yourself (And the part about listening to the stories your scars tell? WAH!!!), if you’d like to seize and grow your power, if you’re ready to speak your truth.
Cassandra would be proud!
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